Yesterday was one of those days where just one small thing changed the whole course of the day. That one thing was the fan heater in my bedroom. It appeared to have broken down. In reality I think what actually happened was I managed to rotate the thermostat with my fat fingers while turning it from "two bars" to "one bar". If you don't remember the electric heaters from the 1960's (or earlier), they literally had a sometimes very sparsely shielded exposed bar with the heating element wound around it. Each bar was generally 1KW.

  I didn't fancy freezing in my bedroom so I "borrowed" the fan heater from the little used front room. Then as soon as I was washed and dressed I went to Poundstretcher with the intention of buying a new (plus spare) fan heater. I searched the place from high to low, and couldn't find any. Rather than go home empty handed I got a few bits that would be useful (cleaning stuff), and then went to the tills.

  It was unusual to find what must have been a manager manning the till. I think he was just covering for the girl who had some other errand (maybe a toilet break). I mentioned to him that I was surprised that they had no fan heaters, and he said that they did, but they were still in the warehouse. He said that if I wanted to wait for the girl to come back he would go and get one for me. he asked if I wanted a flat or upright one, and I said I would have one of each.

  On my way too and from Poundstretcher I realised I was walking at more or less my top speed. That was good, in so much as I could do it, but bad because I felt pretty bad. The bits that felt bad were basically everything except my legs. I am sure I can blame most of it on my alcoholic poisoning from two nights earlier, but I did wonder if Jodie's cold was getting to me, or even if my 'flu jab might take a bit of blame. Ultimately it was probably just the excess booze killing my liver.

  When I got home from Poundstretcher I was caught in a sort of dilemma. I wanted to sit down and attempt to repair the broken fan heater, and yet I didn't feel like I had the patience for it.  Before deciding on that conundrum I wanted to do two other things. They were to print out some stickers on my Dymo Elektratag to put on the heaters to show when I bought them. There is no goor reason for that beyond I find it interesting to see how long that last for. The last heaters I bought, including the one that I thought had failed in my bedroom, were bought approximately 2 years ago.

  The other thing, after putting the stickers on, was to put one of the new heaters, the upright one, in the living room. I noticed that one way they are cutting costs of the manufacture of these heaters is to put shorter mains leads on them. The upright one I put in the front room only just reached the socket powering it. It is an indication of how little testing goes into these heaters that upon turning it on they emit a horrible smell as any oily contamination burns off the heating elements when they are powered up for the first time. I only ran it for about 30 seconds, and it stunk the room out. I probably ought to run it for a few minutes today to finally clear it.

  The next thing I decided to do was to examine the apparently broken fan heater. I opened it up, and I could see no obvious problem, but there was quite an accumulation of dust in it. That was dealt with by using my vacuum cleaner. I then used my multimeter to check the thing out electrically. It was then that I discovered the thermostat had somehow been set to what was probably the frost setting, and it considered the room was too warm to need heat. So I put it back together again, and it worked perfectly !

  To say "I put it back together again" is actually a bit glib, and misses out the fight to get the front grill in. When correctly assembled the grill is curved, but it springy, and prefers to be straight. I imagine in the factory they have some sort of jig to hold the grill to the correct curvature to fit the retaining slots. Doing it without the jig is a mixture of brute force and ignorance. The really annoying thing is that once it pops into place it looks so natural and bloody innocent !

  Before I put the hoover away I decided I might as well do the unpleasant task of emptying it. That always produces clouds of dust as I try and clean the filter over the open wheelie bin. Fortunately this all happens outside in the fresh air, and if I am lucky the wind blows it away from me. Before I put the hoover away I decided I might as well use it to hoover the dining room, front room, and hall. I think I rather amazed myself doing that. I certainly couldn't have imagined doing it earlier in the day when I was feeling rough. I didn't find the energy to do all the stairs, but I did do the first few steps.

  I guess by this time the first hints of the sun coming out were happening - rather later than expected. That might have spurred me on to do something like going for a walk, or cutting the "lawn", but it did the opposite. I felt like I wanted to lay on my bed reading and if it happened, snoozing too. I didn't even do that at first. I felt hungry. After getting such a high blood glucose reading in the morning I didn't want to eat anything for the rest of the day after eating the Thai flavoured fish cakes I had for breakfast. I knew they were bad, but if there was any time to eat them at all it was in the morning.

  In theory, but I didn't dare check, my blood glucose was even higher in the early afternoon, thanks to those fish cakes, but I still had the problem that I felt hungry. I knew that the root of it was actually boredom, and so I sort of compromised. I had some rice crackers and cheese. Both usually contribute very little to me blood glucose. I had the same, with some pickled sliced jalapeños for my dinner. I also had a few snacks of salted peanuts - also known not to raise my blood glucose by much.

  In the evening I checked the TV channels, and I have no idea how many I can currently watch on my TV using a USB dongle TV receiver. I know it is less than I can get on my big TV in the front room, but I doubt I would have found any more than zero on there that I fancied watching. Rather than broadcast TV, I watched some more old recordings of Blakes Seven. After the second episode I retired to bed to read for a while.

  I rather expected that like the previous night, I would fall asleep quite early, but sleep would not come for ages. It must have been around 11pm, a couple of hours after trying for sleep, that I finally fell asleep. Last night was one of those nights where when I did sleep I slept well, but I did experience a bit of insomnia. The worst was around 3am (or was it 2am ?). I had woken up to go to the toilet. At that time I had not been sleeping completely under the duvet because it felt too warm for that. I guess the chill of the bathroom (with the window ajar to let the cold night air in) cooled me enough that I found it hard to warm up in bed. That is when I turned the heater on low for the rest of the night. It felt like an hour before I got back to sleep again, but I suspect the reality of it was probably closer to 20 minutes.

  There seems to be two ways of waking up. In one way you know you are going to go back to sleep, and the other way you know it is time to get up. I am not really sure what the difference is. I can feel a bit tired either way. At around 7am I woke up knowing I was going to get up (albeit rather gently). Once I had had a wee, and given my hands a good wash I checked a fingerprick's worth of blood, and was annoyed, or shocked, or something to see that my blood glucose was 10.0mmol/l again. I was sure it should be lower after taking care of what I had eaten for most of yesterday.

  It was a little later, while sitting on the toilet for a poo, always a good time to think, that I remembered the battery indicator on my blood test meter was showing low, but the meter was not saying it thought the battery was too low. Anyway, I replaced the batteries, and tried again. This time the reading was 9.2mmol/l. That is still too high, but a bit more realistic. If were to clutch at straws I would also say that I have just opened a brand new pack of test strips, and that casts some doubt on the reading. I am not going to prick a finger again today, but tomorrow I think I will compare readings between my old and new test meters. It will be interesting to see if there is a big discrepancy.

  That just leaves the old age question of what I will do today ? I am not a lot more enthusiastic about it than I was on Friday, but I think Jodie wants to come over for our usual Sunday afternoon drinking session. I think I will try and see if she is feeling OK before saying it is OK to come over. Last Friday was a bit of a waste of time for both of us. Other than that....I don't know. I just took a short break from writing this to go and turn the new heater on in the front room to burn off a bit more of the oily, or other contamination, from the heating elements. I think it is OK now, but during the 3 or 4 minutes that I ran it on full power I ended up doing some light tidying up in the front room. I am wondering if I fancy doing a bit more light housework today. I know I definitely have to do a bit of washing up. The beer glasses need a good wash, and maybe a bit of white vinegar to make them really sparkle, and I could do with washing some cutlery.....I seem to have run out of forks and spoons this morning !